It is a truism that travel broadens the mind, and brings the adventurous traveler in contact with many, many things— some of them elevated and educational and some of them mundane – and one of the mundane adventures is the exposure to the many, many different ways that human waste can be disposed of, ranging from the elaborate to the unspeakable.
The United States being, as Europeans are so tiresomely fond of reminding us, a relatively new country, our indoor plumbing arrangements are fairly recent and relatively standardized; rare (at least on the West Coast, and outside the historical districts) it is to encounter the old-fashioned toilet with the water tank up near the ceiling and a chain-pull hanging down, which releases the water, sending it thundering down the pipe to flush the bowl in one mighty, gravity-fed blast. But this was quite the usual sort I encountered in Europe- amusing, noisy, but fairly familiar and most usually clean.
Such is not always the case, as travelers find to their dismay- and even military standards of maintenance and cleanliness are not quite up to the challenge of keeping plumbing in a temporary building gone twenty-years over the originally expected lifetime up to par. This is, of course, a roundabout way of leading into my highly personal account of the Top Three Most Disgusting Public Lavatories I have ever encountered. No doubt, others have encountered worse, and are welcome to comment with the gruesome particulars.
The Third Most Disgusting was a little shed, an outhouse at the edge of a field, beside the road between Towada City and Lake Towada. There was actually nothing inside the shed save a hole in the floor of it and a fetid stench rising from the hole and the unspeakable pit underneath, a stench of such solidity in the heat of summer that you could practically see it, like the little ripples in the air over a cartoon skunk. And that was it— no paper of any sort, no water, just the little shed beside the road. It was the only thing resembling a public lavatory for miles – unless of course, you counted the benjo ditches, but not many Americans had the insouciance to use the ditches, not in broad daylight and in the open, anyway.
I regret to say that the Second Most Disgusting was actually the latrine at EBS-Zaragoza, a little cubicle at the end of a thirty-year old Quonset hut that housed the radio and engineering sections, which cubicle actually boasted a small window. The window saved it by a short head (no pun intended) from being a contender for First, in that it fresh air could be induced to enter, and dilute the potent reek emanating from the urinal. No matter how the cleaning lady scoured it, and no matter how many gallons of bleach and other cleansing agents we poured down it, on hot summer days the odor of crusted urine imbedded in thirty-year old plumbing beat them back and emerged triumphant, wafting down the corridor as far as the passage to the automation room. I hung a neatly lettered sign on the door to the latrine during one particularly hot summer; Warning: You are Now Entering The Bog of Incredible Stench, and everyone laughed their ass off, except for MSgt. Ken, the Station manager, who made me take it down.
The Most Disgusting Public Latrine in the west of the world actually was also in Spain; a service station restroom on the outskirts of San Roque, close by Gibraltar. I had to stop and fill the VEV’s gas tank, and both Blondie (then about 11 years old) and I badly needed to use the facilities. It was immediately apparent, from the moment that I opened the door at the back of the service station building, that the staff of the service station did not include any of the female persuasion. Not only was the toilet and sink caked with a unique assortment of filth, but a cardboard carton which performed as a waste basket – since a lot of facilities in Europe are incapable of digesting toilet paper it was full to overflowing with what in the good old US of A is normally flushed down the toilet – was covered with a moving carpet of enormous insects. Some kind of mutant daddy-long-legs was moving and seething, all over the carton of waste, the floor, the filthy sink and the walls. It looked for all the world like that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie with the cave full of tarantulas. My daughter took one horrified look at it, and said,
“Mom, I don’t have to go that bad!”
Unfortunately, I did. The bushes out at the back of the service station were thin and insubstantial, and I practically levitated a good ten inches over the disgusting seat. I have mercifully blocked out the name of the gas company – otherwise I would have advised nuking it from orbit, as the only way to make sure of it being cleansed from this earth.
Blondie has since made a practice of checking out the women’s restroom of any restaurant before she consumes anything from their menu, on the theory that if they can’t keep the can clean, the Deity knoweth what standards prevail in the kitchen. Words to live by, people, words to live by.
Having grown up in Soviet Russia (hold the Yaakov Smirnoff jokes, please), I have learned to use pit latrines from an early age. These included samples of both the one-holer configuration and the more sophisticated trench type. Of course, that was then and there. The worst latrine that I have ever smelled on this side of the Iron Curtain was the toilet of the Ypres Range at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The Ypres Range was, of course, home to the “gas chamber”.
After getting completely saturated with tear gas — inside and out, of course — we thought that our sense of smell would be non-mission-capable for days. Not so. Minutes after emerging from the “gas chamber” to pound our snot-spattered chests in pride at having survived the latest evolution of basic training, we ended up wearing the masks to the much, much less bearable latrine.
Having grown up in Soviet Russia (hold the Yaakov Smirnoff jokes, please), I have learned to use pit latrines from an early age. These included samples of both the one-holer configuration and the more sophisticated trench type. Of course, that was then and there. The worst latrine that I have ever smelled on this side of the Iron Curtain was the toilet of the Ypres Range at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The Ypres Range was, of course, home to the “gas chamber”.
After getting completely saturated with tear gas — inside and out, of course — we thought that our sense of smell would be non-mission-capable for days. Not so. Minutes after emerging from the “gas chamber” to pound our snot-spattered chests in pride at having survived the latest evolution of basic training, we ended up wearing the masks to the much, much less bearable latrine. At least in the gas chamber one did not have to inhale small, airborne particles of human feces.
“Blondie has since made a practice of checking out the women’s restroom of any restaurant before she consumes anything from their menu, on the theory that if they can’t keep the can clean, the Deity knoweth what standards prevail in the kitchen.”
Interestingly, this is one of the criteria that (legendarily) the Michelin men used when evaluating a resto. It was often said diparagingly of them that “they only care if you have clean bathrooms”.
My candidates are all in Mexico. One in Rosarito Beach was so bad I went back to the car for my camera and took pictures.
Lets see, it’s a toss up between the 55 gallon drums cut off about half way in a plywood shed, that contractors would come by once a week to empty (dipping out by hand with a bucket into a tanker truck to empty it) somewhere in Saudi Arabia during Gulf War 1.0 way back in 90, and a gas station off of I 10 in Louisanna, where the toilet had overflowed several months back was never cleaned or fixed, and in fact produced daily eruptions. The staff thought it was quite hilarious when some tourist went in there, flushed and the toilet proceeded to run backwards, sending a fountain of filth easily three feet high. This is why when I pass through on my way to Panama City, I only stop in Casinos to use the can while in Louisanna.
A gas station restroom I encountered in Honduras would rival your first place finisher if it had been swarming with bugs. Like you, I also had no choice but to pee in this particular bathroom. Toilets in Honduras clog up frequently because the old piping isn’t conducive to toilet paper use but that doesn’t stop anyone from using the bathroom. This toilet was filled to the brim with the various forms of waste that can exit a human body. Being filled to the brim also didn’t stop anyone, they simply left their deposits in the corners and other empty areas of the floor.
Yummy.
Sgt Mom, I hate to say it, but those are pretty tame.
Iraqis don’t like to use seats. If we were lucky enough to have a seat over the hole we used, we had to be especially vigilant in keeping the Iraqi soldiers from using it. Since they don’t believe in using seats, they generally stand on the seat and squat over the hole. Usually they miss the hole. There are no cleaning ladies, of course.
I don’t know about you, but following these guys was disgusting.
Sometimes I think Iraq is doomed forever since they don’t have good toilets and they don’t like dogs. Disgusting country.
And I’ll never forget bringing a handsaw out to the field head one time. We used a child’s school writing desk as a seat. You sit on it backwards with your nether parts hanging between the seat and the desk, which served as a good back rest.
Problem was that there wasn’t enough room in front for that additional appendage. I don’t know how others had used it, but we’d only been there a few days. The writing desk was an upgrade.
So I hacked out the seat to suit as close as possible, but it still had sharp edges to contend with.
Yeah, worrying about the cleaning maid was the least of our worries.
Shortly thereafter, we got “Wag Bags.” I love those things. It’s quite literally, high tech s**t.
My most recent blog entry even has a film that contains a discussion of the head that replaced the writing desk.
The bog at my home in Italy easily digests toilet paper, as also the ones here in Britain do. But my Greek flatmates apparently throw the paper in the bin, not the bog – anyway it’s a matter I am content not to investigate in depth.
The loos in Italian railway stations and highway service stations used to be notorius as repositories of filth. The railway company solved the problem by just closing (or even knocking) down the unmanageable ones, those in the smallest stations – and good riddance to the passengers in dire need. The remaining ones are quite good.
Also the cleanliness of the service stations’ toilets greatly improved, but on their walls you find ads such as “Young stud with xx cm long willy for singles and couples, call yyy-yyyyyy” or, even more hilarious, “Young passive gay looking for hirsute, virile trucker…”.
Riyadh, December 1990, the outhouses behind the Persco Table. …damn…a hole in a board over a hole in the ground and NO shovel or dirt…and it’s 90 degrees.
After that the weirdest thing I’ve seen were the commodes in Germany…that shelf thing…I understood after someone explained it…but in this day and age shouldn’t we be done looking for worms.
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